This is a treatment of the social policy of assimilation. It compares assimilation policy in Australia, Canada and New Zealand and focuses in particular on the measures used to mould the "next generation" of aboriginal people, while children. The policy is traced back to its origins in the British House of Commons in 1837 and is shown to have taken different forms in different policy periods, ranging from early missionary attempts to "protect" aboriginal people from European settlers, to current interest in the development of a more plural society in which aboriginal people control their own institutions.